Posts Tagged ‘Panos Cosmatos’

I had intended to write about this film months ago but failed to for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I recently became a father for the first time and now intend to channel my creative energies toward shaping and nurturing the wee spongy mind of my infant son.However, I will try to rectify this hideous blog dormancy as best I can.

Made in 2010 but shown in a limited capacity in various festivals prior to its home release, Beyond the Black Rainbow is the debut feature from the superbly named Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos. It was made for very little money, and seems to have made a whole lot less in turn, which is unfortunate given that there aren’t very many films at all that bother to look or sound this good in any given year. It is not for everyone*, and will likely prove an infuriating film to those for whom the all-pervasive aesthetic on display is neither seductive nor engaging, but for the appropriate audience (in which I enthusiastically place myself) it is a gorgeous and visionary cinematic delight.

Beyond the Black Rainbow opens as a promotional video for the Arboria Institute, as Dr. Mercurio Arboria introduces himself and the institution in which the film is set. The doctor is styled as a guru of yesteryear, deliberately reminiscent of such New Age scientist figures as Timothy Leary, albeit here with the darker edge of a cult leader. Before long, we are shown the institute itself and its head researcher and erstwhile Arboria disciple, Dr. Barry Nyle. The sinister Nyle is studying or treating what appears to be a patient at the institute, the near-catatonic Elena, a silent anguished girl who refuses to communicate with Nyle and who seems to be sadistically tormented by him. It is hinted that Elena possesses some kind of psychic, telekinetic power that is somehow kept subdued by means of a glowing tetrahedron pyramid in another level of Arboria, the corridors and rooms of which are also frequently roamed by silent “Sentionauts” (comparisons to Daft Punk characters is both unavoidable and fair), amongst other unusual features and oddities. Dark secrets are revealed pertaining to Dr. Nyle’s past and the precise nature of his work with the largely absent Dr. Arboria as Elena steadily prepares to escape the insidious institute in which she is held prisoner, with an increasingly unhinged Nyle in pursuit. Read the rest of this entry ?